Katie Hopkins Blog

There is an expression in military circles that goes: ‘feet ok, mail getting though?’ Two little questions that sum up the entire universe of an average soldier and his happiness. And no matter how his feet or whether his mail has indeed ‘got through’ he responds with the affirmative: ‘yes sir’   because he knows that is the correct answer and will keep him out of trouble.

When you think about it, the commercial environment is measured in equally simple terms – terms to do with assessing profit and growth. Just as these are the motivating force of any business, so are individuals intrinsically linked to this motivation through their pay.  Employee surveys state that ‘salaries are not the only consideration’ but then ‘promotion also matters’. We may not state that money is our motivation, (and it is not considered survey etiquette to do so) but it is consistently the primary force that drives people from their bed to plunge head first into the subway and beyond.

And with more than 2.62 million unemployed, who can blame them. The labour market is carrying surplus and all work is good work – particularly if it is paid and sustainable. My role in education is to make young people more employable: equipped with skills employers want. Their biggest concern is not trying to get a good job; it is trying to get any job. They recognise the competition is sitting next to them in crowded lecture halls and bustling campuses. To this anxious crowd, unpaid internships feel like a good job – one I spoke to had been an unpaid intern for over a year. 

As my mother’s Woman’s Institute group are very quick to point out, ‘in this world there are good people and bad people, and the latter don’t live around here’.  So how do we make the moral decision on what is good work or bad? What is the role of a professional bailiff? Is that not good work? Not a good person? From a commercial perspective, they reduce debtor days and are incentivised against performance targets. Manageable, profitable, results oriented. Or what about the firm engaged to manage a headcount reduction program. From a commercial perspective they reduce exposure to employability law, and operate to a fixed cost. But would it pass this noble formula for good work laid down by the Good Work Commission? I doubt it.

Perhaps the answer depends on whose shoes you are standing in? Because increasingly it seems that we are obligated to stand in the shoes of the long term employee. As the CEO of an organisation, the boardroom is cast aside, the board table upended, the management accounts filed away, and in its place we are supposed to focus with close to parental adoration on our employees. Take their temperature, check their pulse, offer them the comfortable chair and ask operations to whistle up some afternoon tea. Are they feeling ok, are they feeling content in their work? Are they happy? Offer them a snap survey to check. ‘Employee engagement’ is like giving more hormones to HR.

As an employer I feel like the employee has some kind of magnet to which political will is inextricably drawn, such that all legislation – and there is oodles of the stuff – is increasingly reading like a manifesto for how to make your employee happy. Strangled by TUPE, paternity, maternity, flexi time, job share, part time, sickness benefit, employability law and the plethora of rights that manifest themselves with the arrival of any new employee, I wonder just how small business is supposed to be David’s engine for  growth when it is spluttering for legislative air.

Occasionally I find myself wishing that ‘feet alright, post getting though’, could be enough for my own business too. 

@KTHopkins

And they’re off. £250 put down against fruit and veg, a gesture perhaps of the greater prize of £250,000 promised just 12 weeks down the line.

Ed proved enormously irritating from the off. He seemed less like a finance professional and more a committed soup fanatic, determined to make soup above all else.  Jim astutely pointed out they were going to make soup ‘like they had never made soup before’. Indeed.

Just like M & S, Melody was so much more than just a team leader. She christened the team, she led the team and she took the team to victory – and all with perfect make up and perfectly polished nails. Not only that, but with all with the blessing of Al Gore.

Like many animals going in for the kill, there is a certain moment when you can smell that your prey is weak and that their time is up. For Ed, pulling out the line ‘I am the shortest in the competition’ was that moment. Being vertically challenged is not something you mention in front of the Sugar.

 ‘Roll with the punches’ said Ed. More a question of needing to take cover under fire.

Ten Things to Love about Lady Thatcher

1)    Not needing to be popular

Lady Thatcher accepted that difficult decisions made you unpopular. George Osbourne thinks he is unpopular because of his plan for cuts. No George, you just have one of those faces we want to slap. Thatcher on the other hand, was unpopular because she knew better.

2)    A working mother – but no one knew

Not till Mark Thatcher started doing strange things with models and fast cars did any of us even realise Thatcher was a mother. Did she ask for flexi time, maternity leave, short days, child care support? – did she hell. Would she have belonged to mumsnet?  Never.

3)    It was never about her

Thatcher was a Prime Minister that just wanted to get on with being Prime Minister. She wasn’t softening the American market for advisory positions, she wasn’t writing memoirs and competing for nonfiction chart No.1, she wasn’t trying to map out a future lecture circuit. She just wanted to be PM.

4)    She didn’t have a prat for a partner

Unlike Prince Phillip, Dennis knew better than to try to speak to the natives. He was the unseen dream. Nowadays, it seems no one knows their place. Cherie was a gurning monstrosity with the steeliest ambition at No.10; Mrs Sarkowsy is a fool if she thinks we buy this demure coy nonsense – you stole a husband love. And old ‘green fingers’ Obama is more powerful than Opra.

5)    The handbag

We knew Thatcher was real because she carried things about. In a handbag. We like that. And she looked like she might wield it in anger if required. And we liked that even more.

6)    Cool lines

Alan Sugar gets fed his through an ear piece. New politicians get theirs written for them. Thatcher has one liners all of her very own – and they kept the boys in their place for years.

7)    Private not public

Just like her family life, Thatcher believed our society needed to be private not public. And she went about privatising everything. Her faith in the ‘invisible hand’ to deliver a slap on the bottom to the nanny state was impeccable

8)    Peter Mandelson

She would never have employed Peter Mandelson. Not once, not twice, not ever.

9)    The special relationship

She nurtured our ‘special relationship’ with the States; she may even have been instrumental in its longevity. But she never fawned on the other side of the Atlantic. She never wanted Ronald as her best friend and never acted like the clingy guy at the party.

10) The lady is not for turning, or burning.

When the IRA tried to blow up Thatcher in Brighton, she did press at 4am, got M & S to open early so the conference delegates could get new clothes, and cracked on. Stoic, brilliant, irreplaceable.

What is it with divers? They are the wrong side of naughty every time.

Tom Daley, the pocket sized diver from Plymouth got into trouble with his school mates for being an irritating twerp. He had to move schools.

The Alabama man that killed his new wife whilst on a scuba dive got into trouble with the police for being a murderer. He will have to move home – from a house to a jail.

And now poor old Eduardo, the Croatian striker for Arsenal, gets into trouble with the SFA and the whole of the Celtic supporters club for taking a wee dive to win a penalty. He will have to be moved emotionally – from smug bastard to repentant Croat.

Walking through the church graveyard this morning, I was struck by the way we choose to lie after we die.

It seems those dying earlier this century had grand designs on how they wanted to be physically remembered. The tombs of the long deceased are concrete mega lumps, occupying more square footage than a regular sleeping man ever could. These people died. And they wanted you to know about it. And whilst they are now nothing more than a body, in life they were SOMEBODY.

Nowadays, what with all that climate change, organic farming, the population trust and the price of oil, we are inspired to curb these grandiose statements of death. People get put in little pots no bigger than the box of matches that helped cremate them.

Some husband and wife teams reunited in the graveyard have the husband buried in his cumbersome concrete mega structure (for they perished long before the sprightly female) and the wife, perched on top in her modern little box.

I am not sure what the thought is that I am left with. We can either celebrate the prudence that we have found in this age of worthiness – or the fact that that women end up on top in the end.

I want to be scattered to the winds. It would be cool if my kids remembered me as a breath of fresh air.

Having spent two weeks in France, I have been educated as to the ways of the caravan owner. And there are a few things that I have learnt.

1) Mobile home owners are incapable of sitting still. Whilst waiting in line for the ferry one guy hovered his car and shook out his carpets whilst the missus made two cups of tea and rearranged the plastic flowers.

2) They like to strap on extra bits. Extra bike racks, spare wheels, additional luggage compartments by Thule. They are never happier than when they find somewhere else to stow the additional clutter they otherwise would not have brought. 

3) They like to express their affinity with the out of doors in every way possible. Footwear is robust and waterproof, clothing is Patagonia and replete with utility belts and furniture can stow away. I saw an entire picnic bench collapse into a large family sized box of matches.

4) Nudity is nothing. Living with nature means acceptance of nature as far as this lot see it. If you shower in the communal block, you are part of the commune of life and you may as well let it all hang out. What’s the odd bum or boob when you are weeing in a bucket?

5) It seems to help if your unsightly home away from home is called something fast like ‘speedie’ or ‘zippy’ or  ’whizzie’. Even when they are on their side in ditch after a nasty gust of wind they can imagine how fast they might have gone.

6) They are mercilessly self sufficient. A restaurant on a caravan site is about as populated as a pub in a nunery.

It seems to me that the divide between the women’s and Men’s game at Wimbledon is now a vast gulf which can never be bridged.

The men’s game is fast, punishing and raw – unless you are Fed in which case it is pure beauty. The women’s game is laboured, pedestrian, a touch sulky and a way too chunky. I mean chunky in the physical sense.

Some of those girls are look more like Ann Harvey than Ann Summers and frankly it ‘aint pretty. Their ample midrifts are flumped over larger backsides and supported by thighs twice the girth of the Umpires chair. 

I don’t get it. They are the elite of their sport, masters of their game and vying for the ultimate tennis tiara – and they cannot be arsed to hit the salad. If they are  burning as many calories as they surely must be, then how is it possible to still be a touch on the lardy side? What the heck are they eating to maintain these extra folds in the face of extreme physical exercise?

If the lovely Roddick can manage to shed a stone from his well toned physique at the advice of his fitness coach, surely they could have a crack at shifting a couple each? They could even do it together: Weight watchers @ Wimbledon.

I am sitting on the sofa writing this. And I just ate a bag of minstrels. But then again, I am not about to squeeze myself into a white mini dress and bend over alot.

Mark Sandford, Governor of South Carolina, has just been outed for an affair with an Argentian lover.

The father of four, husband of one and Governor of a purist state disappeared over Father’s Day weekend in order to spend four days with his alternative squeeze somewhere down South. Having broken down in a press conference and laid his cards on the table he would now like the press to respect his wife and sons and give then some privacy.

Why is it that the thoughts of adulterous men only turn to their families once their affair has been discovered?

Why would the press accord his wife respect when he has not?

And why is it that in the midst of all this melee, many are quick to jump to his defence and uphold his reputation. If Mr Mark Sandford were a Mrs, would he be afforded the same support?

I think I understand all the complexities of the debate and I have been on the receiving end of all of it. The husband who ran off, the loneliness of the injured party and the woman pelted with rotten fruit because my partner was once belonged to someone else.

Whatever the verdict of the jury on their sofas, one thing is certain. Despite all the hoopla Mr Mark Sandford will be feeling a whole lot better. His secret is out, he no longer has anything to hide, and the worst is over.

It is a trait I see time and time again. Men gripped in the thralls of an affair reach a certain point where they want to be discovered, where the burden of secrecy is too over whelming and where they actively want someone to ‘lance the boil’ so that the worst may be over and they can start to breathe again, live again. After a storm, there is an uneasy calm, and after that the process of rebuilding may begin.

I feel sorry for them all. The husband, the wife, the kids, the other party. No one would choose for this to happen and no one would willingly put their family through an emotional mangle just to see how much they could cry.

Life happens, and sometimes we are all the injured and yet innocent party. For most people an affair is the worst time of their life. To live through it in the media spotlight is truly horrid. People reading papers need to recognise that they are not the judge or the jury.  And before they reach a verdict that no one asked for, they need to look at their own lives and question whether they would really stand up to closer inspection.

My daughter and I got to chatting about death.

You may think this unusual in a four year old, but as they say in the film ‘love actually’ – love is all around. And, as it turns out, to young eyes, death is all around as well.

Animals splattered on the road or a walk by a graveyard is usually sufficient to get us going. The day we put granny in a hole in the ground fuelled their interest for a good few months.

I have always told the children that we all die one day and that when I go, I will turn into a star in heaven and will watch them growing up. (Clearly if God has Google I am stuffed and I will be watching from somewhere altogether hotter).

Anyway, I will be a star in heaven and I will be watching them. In terms of a timeline I have always said that I will die when they don’t need me anymore. I like to point out at this juncture in the conversation, that as they learn to put on their own pants and find cbeebies independently, I will become much less important to them.

On our way to sports day this morning India (4) was keen to underline her view that at the moment she does need me and she would prefer it if I stuck around for a bit longer. I wondered when she thought it would be alright for me to pop off:

‘About eleven I should think’.

 I will remind her of this when she is twenty eight and moving into my spare room with her boyfriend…probably with her pants on back to front.

It’s not exactly Obama magic – but it’s good enough for me

Obama rather set the bar when it came to campaigning. Not only did he manage to mobilise an entire continent around his vision for the future, he raised more funds than any other presidential candidate and managed to be cooler than Cristal throughout the process.

My campaign has been somewhat less glamorous and certainly less ground breaking. Occasionally the weight of public opinion has become a little too heavy and the extremes of public exposure a little too hot. In these moments, certain people have kept me going:

1) My daughter – Poppy – aged 3.

In the midst of one emotional meltdown my daughter added her contribution: ‘Mummy, if your bottom was smaller you would be able to wear Dora the Explorer pants like me’. She has a point.

2) My mother

“What you need darling, is a good idea. Like Joanna Lumley. Now she really is lovely”.

3) A lady met whilst door to door canvassing

“Even though I think you were a bit of an arse on the TV, my friend told me that in real life you are actually ok. In fact, you don’t look half as fat as you did either”.

4) Email from an elderly gentleman  

Some of the emails I receive are really supportive and can, quite genuinely, make my day. Others are a little more confusing: “Even if I did vote, which I don’t, I wouldn’t vote for you.”

5) My sister

‘Statistic show you have 50% of the Bournemouth vote.  Your brother in law just voted and he was the second one into the polling station.’

In a way, all of these people are exactly on the money. Real people tell it like it is. And if we have a few more real people in Parliament rather than politicians, I think the change would feel like revolution – a revolution of common sense.